New education standards on teaching teachers to teach (AUDIO)

New standards have been adopted to help teachers who teach future teachers produce teachers better prepared for their futures in the classroom.

The state education department has been working for several years developing the Missouri Standards for Professional Educators. The guidelines will be used in approving new educator preparation programs and accrediting existing programs.

Assistant education commissioner Karla Eslinger says the new standards will focus on helping students gain a good grasp of the content in the subjects they want to teach, finding the best methods for teaching that content, and making sure future teachers know the basic instructional strategies common to teaching any subject. “When I come out of college after all of this has taken place, I’m going to have a profile that’s going to be able to tell me, ‘These are the areas in which I exceed and these are the areas in which I’m still developing.’ As we know a newly minted teacher is going to be developing and growing throughout their profession,” she says.

Testing will show what needs to be done to make future teachers better ready for the classroom. And the standards will give teachers of teachers more information about what they need to do to prepare those students.

The new standards are part of the department’s plan to have Missouri among the ten top performing states in education by the end of this decade.